Dragon Age: Origins E3 Preview

[GameBanshee News]

Voodoo Extreme has gotten around to publishing their own E3-based preview of BioWare's Dragon Age: Origins.

As far as magic goes, mages serve as healers, buffers and damage dealers. BioWare was a little vague on how many classes there are going to be, so I wouldn’t rule out more specialized priestly type characters, just in case you were worried. Back to magic – the spell system seemed very open and interactive. You could, for instance, put out fires with ice spells or even light oil ablaze with a fireball. If you have two AI mages in your party they will actually work together to weave cool little combo effects together so you might want to store that little nugget away for future use (if anything just watch what they do to get some clever ideas).

Wondering what the interface is going to be like? I’m sure it’s a work at progress at this point but here’s what I noticed: On the bottom they had a 20 button hot-bar. Yes, 20. It took up most of the bottom screen. I personally love the idea so hopefully they keep it. Slightly above the hot-bar they had a mini-screen showing off the stats of your active character (hit points and all of that). On the very top they had general menu buttons (quests, settings, etc). The mini-map was on the top right and your party screen (that has little bubbles with faces with life/mana bars wrapping around them) is on the left. The inventory system and paper dolls seemed pretty standard but I wasn’t able to get a very good look at them.